Day 11, 12, and Christmas Day!

We had to skip over Day 10, we are not sure what happened to the person with day 10, we all just hope she is OK. So, on to Day 11!

This was from Carolyn A,

It must have taken an incredible amount of patience and time to cut this all out - it's beautiful!! I have it as the background for my Nativity, but I think I'll have to use it for my small Nativity next year. I love it!


Day 12

Our last day of the swap. This has been so much fun! This one was made by Kristy, and is beautiful!

Inside was a double slide mailer, the kind where the box is as good as the insides!

Here is the inside with 2 removable ornaments

which are now hanging on my tree! What a great idea Kristy!

Day 13. . .

Now I can tell you what I got on my day, Day 4! Our hostess, Mary-Beth, was in charge of the days where we gave our gifts, and therefore would not have one to open. I had to keep it a secret, because everyone opened her gift on a different day.

It is a Button Angel!! Very pretty, and is sitting in my tree.

Thank you M-B, and all the participants in this year's 12 Days Swap.
I hope I'm in on the next one!

And now for Christmas Day pressies!

My wonderful DH and DD were very generous as always, and got me piles of new things to play with! I'm sure these will last me until next December!!

Still collecting the Distress Inks!

And I've wanted a distresser for quite awhile now! plus
a cool ATC background stamp!

Love these masks - now I have them all I think!

Grungeboard! Finally!

Love these stamps!

and these!!
And yes, I now have 2 crow stamps,
one Mounted and one UM! How decadent!!

Wow! I've already used some of the sprocket gears on my January journal page!

I love the paint daubers, wasn't sure at first, but now I know they will be indispensable!!
Haven't tried the Stickles yet.

Aren't they the best DD and DH? And my birthday is on
Thursday. . . I know there's more!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, best wishes for an
awesome New Year!!

Day 9

Joanne's contribution to our Twelve Days of Christmas swap was absolutely awesome! The amount of work that went into this was incredible! She must have started last January! here is the package:



And the present inside:

The cover seems to be felted. . .

with the journal inside! I expected the journal to be blank, but no. . .

Half of the journal was filled with awesome pages of illustrated quotes - beautiful!!

The other half was some blank and some pre-prepared pages. . .

I can't wait to finish this book!!

Days 6 , 7 and 8

It's been a busy few days! We had our "Holiday Tea" Party at school which was a lot of fun, but also very tiring!


Here is Day 6's giftie from the Byhand 12 Days Swap:

Another teeny little present. . .

with something beautiful inside!

this is such a cool little book! Very special!

the inside. . .

Here is where it is sitting, in front of my advent calendar -
I will open it up on Christmas morning when
I put the baby Jesus in the Nativity! Thank you Jane H!!

Day 7 . . .

what a cute little book! All ready for something neat to go inside.
This would be a good way to journal Christmas 2008!
Thanks Nicolette!

And Day 8 . . .

These are magnets! Isn't that cool!

I love the colours, and I can always use magnets.

I know these will be used a lot!! Thanks Wendy K!

Well, that's it for now for the gifties. But I wanted to share something from our school party. We have a parent who makes our Gingerbread House each year, and this year he outdid himself!

He made an exact replica of our school!

even the sign!

He brought the house "naked" and the children and I decorated it.
The trees are made of Rice Krispies!

And the dreadful end of the Gingerbread School - the children had great fun eating it!
(I did manage to save the sign!)

Twelve Days-Day 5

Day 5 was a teeny tiny gift -very intriguing!

And this is what was inside - lovely!!

Made by Linda T, This is beautiful, and I will love wearing it!

Twelve Days-Day 4

This was my day, so I got a giftie I can't share today, but I'll show you what I made!

Here is my package. . .

I made a "banner", although I think you would need more than one to officially be a banner, wouldn't you? Anyway, this was fun to make. I used Pearl-Ex + water in a mini-mister to make the sparkly effect on the centre triangle (apparently I should also add gum arabic). The piece comes off the white background and can be hung up somewhere. One of the recipients has it hanging on a drawer handle here - it looks gorgeous against that beautiful wood M-B!!

Twelve Days-Day 3

Here's Day 3's package. . .



And the sweet little paper doll inside!


This cutie was made by Judy, and I know she will find her way into a journal or altered book. She's wonderful!

Twelve days- Day 2

Here is the Day Two giftie for the Byhand Twelve Days of Christmas Swap. This one is from Beth.




It's beautiful!! An ATC holder! Very cool. Perfect to take to swaps, if I can find any around here!

Here is it opened

Thanks Beth!

Merry Christmas!

And Happy Hanukkah as well! Here is my huge cat Penny, sitting under our tree, her favourite place to sleep!

I have been busy making cards and other things that I can't show you, but here are 2 of my cards, and my very late November Mingle for Therese. Hopefully she's not looking!

This was a Paper Artsy stamp that my DD gave to me on a visit to her place in November. I just added the hat, the holly, and the Merry Christmas! (and some bling in the stars)

The Santa is popped up, but you can't see it in the scan.
The stocking is a wooden embellishment that I got in my stocking last year!

(snowflake is SU)

(back-image is Hero Arts)

Therese's "W" mingle 4X4 -W for Winter of course!

Twelve Days of Christmas

I am participating in a Twelve Days of Christmas gift swap on the Byhand Yahoo group. We each made twelve identical gifts, and sent them out, and we each got a gift. I placed all my gifts in a basket and waited. . .and waited. . .until Dec 13th, when we could start opening!!

This is my basket of unopened gifts, just waiting. . .

This is the Day 4 gift I sent out -no you can't peek!!

I will show you what I received for each day, but the day after so I don't ruin any surprises. Since today is the 14th, I can show you my first gift from Melanie that I opened yesterday!

A beautiful handmade book, with a piano hinge spine! The cover is made of a beautiful marbled paper. I don't know if she made the paper or not. If she did, I will update!

here is the spine

Thanks Melanie! This is a beautiful book, and a great start to the Twelve Days of Christmas!!